Free Night Driving by Lori Wilde Page A

“All iron will and sheer determination, plowing over that median come hell or high water.”
    What do you know? She’d made him laugh. It hadn’t been her intention, but she’d managed to make him laugh. Pleased with herself, Tara returned his grin.
    “You’ve got spunk, Duvall. I like that about you.”
    “Wow. Another compliment. I’m stunned.” She was teasing, but her heart gave a little hop.
    “I’ve got a few more,” he mumbled.
    “How lucky can a girl get? What else do you like about me?”
    “Your smart mouth. That’s another thing.”
    “You like my smart mouth?”
    “Oh, yeah.” His gaze was fixed on her lips.
    Her gaze was fixed on his eyes fixed on her lips. She wasn’t watching where she was going, didn’t see the board lying in the middle of the road, but she heard it.
    Crunch, crunch, crunch.
    Felt a jolt.
    Followed by a rapid-fire popping sound. Once. Twice. Three times.
    The car lurched, swerved. Startled, it took a moment for Tara to figure out what had happened.
    Blowout.
    Fudge crackers! She’d had a blowout.
    Boone swore under his breath and he was already unbuckling his seatbelt.
    Tara pulled over as far as she could on a one-lane dirt road with cornfields on either side. Simultaneously, she and Boone opened their car doors, but she was out before he was. He had the metal knee brace to contend with.
    She walked to the rear of the car. Not one blown-out tire. Not two. But three flats. Both back tires of the Honda and one of the tires on the U-Haul were swiftly going flat. Hands on her hips, she went to investigate the heavy board lying behind the trailer and discovered a heavy two-by-four studded with nails.
    Boone swore. He’d come around the opposite side of the trailer looking completely disgruntled. “Is the whole damned world against me?”
    Tara shrugged.
    He held up a finger. “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me Jupiter is in retrograde or—”
    “Mercury,” she said. “It’s Mercury.”
    “I don’t give a damn if it’s Pluto. The planets did not cause this.”
    “Then what did?”
    “A board with nails in it.”
    “That’s small-picture thinking.”
    “What?” He shoved angry fingers through his hair, managing to appear both disgruntled and devastatingly sexy.
    “On the surface, it appears that a board with nails caused our misfortune, but how did that board get here? On this particular one-lane road, just when we happened along? I mean, what are the odds?” She argued. “Bigger forces are afoot.”
    “You really believe in this zodiac stuff?”
    “I do.”
    “What the hell does retrograde even mean?”
    “Moving backward.”
    “So Mercury is moving backward?”
    “Exactly.”
    “I fail to see how that can affect us.”
    “The moon affects the tides, right?”
    “That’s different.”
    “How so?”
    “It’s because the Earth and the moon are attracted to each other like magnets.”
    “If that’s possible, why not Mercury? When Mercury is in retrograde, it can force fate upon us, usually in regard to something in the past that we need to resolve. Like your relationship with your sister.”
    “Let me get this straight. We have three flat tires because I have unresolved issues with my sister?”
    Tara shrugged. “In a nutshell.”
    “Whacked.” Boone shook his head, pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “The lemonade lady is whacked.”
    “Your cell’s not going to work.”
    He glowered. “And why not?”
    “One, because we’re in the middle of nowhere and I haven’t seen a cell phone tower in a long while. Two, Mercury is in retrograde and it affects travel plans and communications.”
    “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”
    She swept an expansive hand at him. “Be my guest.”
    Boone punched in a number, put the phone to his ear. A few fleeting seconds passed. He swore under his breath. Checked for bars. “Zero,” he spat.
    Tara pressed her lips together to keep from saying “I told you so.”
    He turned